And then the child lay and mused with fierce and rebellious thoughts.  He said to himself, “If my guardian had told me where I might not go; if he had said to me, ’in the inner garden are unwholesome fruits, and in the wood are savage beasts; and though I am strong and powerful, yet I have not strength to root up the poisonous plants and make the place a wilderness; and I cannot put a fence about it, or a fence about the wood, that no one should enter; but I warn you that you must not enter, and I entreat you for the love I bear you not to go thither,’” then the child thought that he would not have made question, but would have obeyed him willingly; and again he thought that, if he had indeed ventured in, and had eaten of the evil fruits, and been wounded by the savage stag, yet if his guardian had comforted him, and prayed him lovingly not to enter to his hurt, that then he would have loved his guardian more abundantly and carefully.  And he thought too that, if his guardian had ever smitten him in wrath, and had then said to him with tears that it had grieved him bitterly to hurt him, but that thus and thus only could he learn the vileness of the place, then he would have not only forgiven the ill-usage, but would even have loved to endure it patiently.  But what the child could not understand was that his guardian should now be tender and gracious, and at another time hard and cruel, explaining nothing to him.  And thus the child said in himself, “I am in his power, and he must do his will upon me; but I neither trust nor love him, for I cannot see the reason of what he does; though if he would but tell me the reason, I could obey him and submit to him joyfully.”  These hard thoughts he nourished and fed upon; and his guardian came no more to him for good or for evil; and the child, much broken by his hard usage and his angry thoughts, crept about neglected and spiritless, with nothing but fear and dismay in his heart.

So the imagination shaped itself in my mind, a parable of the sad, strange life of man.

“Perfect Love!” If it were indeed that?  Yet God does many things to His frail children, which if a man did, I could not believe him to be loving; though if He would but give us the assurance that it was all leading us to happiness, we could endure His fiercest stroke, His bitterest decree.  But He smites us, and departs; He turns away in a rage, because we have broken a law that we knew not of.  And again, when we seem most tranquil and blest, most inclined to trust Him utterly, He smites us down again without a word.  I hope, I yearn to see that it all comes from some great and perfect will, a will with qualities of which what we know as mercy, justice, and love are but faint shadows—­but that is hidden from me.  We cannot escape, we must bear what God lays upon us.  We may fling ourselves into bitter and dark rebellion; still He spares us or strikes us, gives us sorrow or delight.  My one hope is to cooperate with Him, to accept the chastening joyfully and courageously.  Then He takes from me joy, and courage alike, till I know not whom I serve, a Father or a tyrant.  Can it indeed help us to doubt whether He be tyrant or no?  Again I know not, and again I sicken in fruitless despair, like one caught in a great labyrinth of crags and precipices.